Leggy seedlings!

[skye1974]

I'm growing beetroot and butternut squash from seed (as well as lots of others!)
I started them off indoors about 2 weeks ago and I'm not sure if they're happy or not.
The squash seedlings started off with a good pair of first leaves but then they grew about 4 or 5 inches before the first pair of true leaves grew. I think they've had too much heat and light exposure, what do you think?
The beetroot seeds have all come up differently, some with 1 shoot, some with 3 or 4 and all of them are about an inch tall with a tiny leaf on top. Having never grown beetroot from seed before I'm not sure what a healthy seedling should look like!
Help please!!!
Skye

[wafflycat]

I've found my seedlings go leggy if they don't get enough light.

To give you something to compare against.. and in all honesty I don't know if mine are good, bad, or indifferent, here's some of my summer squash family seedlings



See bottom left - that's a 'golden zucchini' planted 3rd March.
The smaller plant immediately the left is a patty pan squash, planted 20the March. There's another goldn zucchini behind.

The golden zucchini looked like this when it first appeared.




Here's a pic of my beetroot taken this afternoon



Inside on a windowsill they got quite leggy, but then I've moved them outside into a cloche where they get far more daylight than when inside and they seem to be picking up a lot compared to how wimpy they were tending to inside.


Hope they help to give you something to compare against at least.

[skye1974]

Thanks Wafflycat, my beetroot seedlings aren't as mature as yours yet, I'll get a photo on here later.
As for my poor butternut squash seedlings, they are no more, the snails got into my greenhouse and munched all the leaves, GRRRR!
So I'll start again, maybe straight into the allotment under cloches this time!

[jlottie]

Beetroot seeds are funny shaped wrinkly things, there are usually more than one seedling from each "seed" and they need to be thinned out carefully.

I'm just getting the 2nd leaves on my squash, melons and courgettes, as soon as they had germinated they were taken out of the propagator into an unheated GH. If they get to leggy they just flop or can get damaged by the wind when planted out. To try and help protect and give them a good start when planting out, I add some slow release fertiliser to the hole and plant the seedlings in a dip making a bank 4 - 6 inches high all around the plant. This also helps when watering